Barbie-heimer

I must admit that I don’t have an overwhelming desire to see the “blockbuster”movie Barbie. Sure, I had a Barbie doll. But I didn’t relate to her. She was tall, and impossibly thin with a long blonde ponytail. I took a blunt pair of scissors to her ponytail at one point. Her head came off so easily. As did her arms. Pieces easily went on walkabout.

I couldn’t afford to buy Barbie clothes, she came dressed in a zebra striped bathing suit, and nothing else, other than tiny white high heels. So I made clothing for her but eventually I became bored with her and abandoned her for Tonka Toy (Breyer) horses.

I don’t remember who gave me the doll, I think it was a Christmas gift from our next-door neighbor, ca. 1959 or 60. I was short and dark, and had no boobs to speak of, they were a long way off on the grown-up horizon, so I didn’t relate to her all that much. Besides, I hated the color pink. I think she met her demise via a 4th of July firecracker. Her graffitied carapace became housing for a tiny bomb.

I will probably go and see Oppenheimer, because some of my family history is tied up with Los Alamos—my mother’s cousin, who was brilliant in mathematics, was whisked away right out of high school to work on the bomb. 

We only found this out much later after Marie had died of cancer. In 1990, I made a pilgrimage to the Delgado Bridge in Santa Fe where the Rosenberg spies were captured, and also a visit to the Pajarito Plateau, where we visited the petroglyphs of T’sanque/T’sankawi, and Los Alamos where a spare shells of Fat Man and Little Boy still doze in the museum. 

The place names still haunt me. Los Alamos, Alamogordo, Stallion Gate, Trinity, Oak Ridge, Fermi Institute. I am a child born of the Age of Light. Meanwhile, on the rock outcrops, near Los Alamos, the petroglyph of Kokopelli, playing the water sprinkler, abides.

My cousin’s name was Mary—or Marie—Walsh, as we called her. She was the daughter of Wild Bill, the gambler, and grew up on Home Ranch, in the Reese River Valley. I think she was also my grandmother’s goddaughter. 

My grandmother sometimes received postcards from her, addressed from New Mexico, but no PO Box, or return address. I remember there was a letter with words cut out of it, clearly censored. Like little blank eyes. My grandmother hid them in the top drawer of the bureau beneath her handmade Irish lace, and all her sewing scraps.

In the mid-1970s, I worked for “Crappa,” retired politician Roger Kent, whose father was Senator William Kent (who gave Muir Woods to the Department of the Interior) and Roger’s brother “Buffalo” that is Sherman Kent, was head of the CIA, and they both admitted the Manhattan Project was the best kept secret. 

Even the Kents didn’t know about the Manhattan Project until it was declassified. For a government that didn’t keep secrets well, it was the best kept secret of all. And Sherman—if anyone should have known, it was him, after all, he was a CIA. But Sherman was also in the dark.They were surprised to learn that my cousin, who was gifted with numbers, had worked on the bomb at los Alamos.

Sadly, the math gene blithely skipped over me, is, despite having an Olympic gold medal winner try to teach me, but I do remember the bomb drills where we hid our heads under our desks at Lagunitas School. We covered the back of our necks with one arm, and our eyes with the other, and waited for the drill to be over. The day they were detonating atomic bombs over Jackass flats in Nevada, the entire school went outside to the playground to witness the light. 

We were in West Marin, a long way from Jackass Flats. The sky did go white. And it did sound like you could hear a muffled bomb go off in the distance. 

Later, when I tried to look this information up, I was told the detonation was underground. That what we witnessed was impossible. Maybe so, but we did hear and see something that day when the sky was robbed of color. And we were 500 miles away on the northern coast of California. It made the presence of the atomic bomb far too real for me. I was haunted by nightmares for years to come.

As it turns out, the last above ground nuclear test was July 17, 1962, so yes, we could have witnessed an above ground blast. And every year on Labor Day weekend, I can’t help but think of all the artistic hordes intent on radical self expression, gather at Black Rock Playa to ignite a Burning Man— to burn away the corporate sins of the world. (I attended the first burning man at Baker Beach in San Francisco, 1986.) 

Each year, my old college friend, David Best, erects a phantasmagoric wooden temple—just downwind from that radioactive Armageddon of Jackass Flats. prayer flags in the wind. I can’t help but think of all those radical isotopes on the wing. And how we are all glowing from within during this Age of Light.

see my atomic poem list below

Marie Walsh

My grandmother‘s niece, Marie Walsh, who grew up at Home Ranch, in the Reese River Valley, a block fault valley near Austin, Nevada, was a math whiz. But she disappeared right out of high school. Whenever my grandmother talked about her, she grew sad, Marie had disappeared. She said Marie was like so like an angel with her golden hair about her, my grandmother explained, task-tisking. My grandmother, who was also her godmother, was distraught by the lack of contact. Eventually postcards with 4-cent stamps began to trickle in from exotic places like Chicago, New Mexico, with no return address. Sometimes there were words cut out of the text going right through the postcards like little windows to the soul, but we couldn't see our way in or out. In this way we kept track of Marie, never knowing the backstory, or where she was. This much we knew, she was gifted in math. It had something to do with crunching numbers. Most of our family never got the math gene but we made up for it with boisterous singing at family parties, and in the gift of the gab. It was during the late 50s or mid 60s that we got the obituary, a small column scalloped by a fingernail scissors. My grandmother kept all Marie's cards and letters in an old cigar box, on the top dresser drawer that doubled as a linen closet. The article said that she had died of cancer and there was a hint of the life she had lead, hidden in the lines. I memorized the names of places, Alamogordo, White Sands, Los Alamos. In this way I learned the reason why we practiced those bomb drills, hiding under our desks, waiting for the big one to drop. During recess we all filed out onto the blacktop to see the white flash in the east, followed by the percussion and the sound as they detonated bombs at Jackass Flats. A neighbor, Roger Kent said the Manhattan Project was one of the best kept secrets during the Cold Was, as even his brother Buffalo, who was in the CIA, didn’t even know about it.

6/16 Mill Valley Library Non-fiction class with Sarah Broderick

Wilfred A. Lang, painter (1915-1994)

in progress....

from the  The Wilfred A. Lang Gallery 

My growing collection of Wilfred A. Lang notes from my previous post, suggests another post entry is needed. So little information on him on the internet. Where to even begin, when my imperfect memories gathered in youth, imperfectly recollected and transposed now that I'm older that dirt, makes this more of an act of fiction than anything else.

A defunct Angelfire site was the only decent reference I could find on Wilfred. (No I'm not referring to the Shanghai artist, born in 1954, who cranks out dreadful urban landscapes and sailboats with a palate knife and a fan brush.) Wilfred A. Lang was a complex artist, a student of Robert Stackpole, who worked in complex layers, his imagery embellishing a mythos to ordinary subjects.

I knew Wilfred’s first wife Betty—who was like a second mother to me, and four of his children, and the infamous Sausalito Hoffmans.

Wilfred was always larger than life. As kids, we were terribly excited whenever he came to visit Pat & Betty Wall. I remember him, grizzled, and laden with massive turquoise and silver jewelry, and his haughty second wife, Marcia, in her long flowing skirts, and aquiline nose, who walked like a goddess. She very much resembled her portrait that hung above the daybed in the living room.

That colorful full-length abstract portrait that Wilfred gave to Betty mesmerized me. I always thought it odd that he gave Betty a painting of his next wife, who left him soon after. But the full-length portrait was gorgeous. As a child, I stared at it for hours on end, following the intricate ghost calligraphy embroidered on the painting.

I didn't know of Wilfred's Sonoma County presence until I began this post. I'm sitting here writing this blog post a stone's throw from where he built a house in Mays Canyon. Wilfred was friends with Bernard Zachaim, and also stayed at Marguerute Wiildenhain's Pond Farm, in Guerneville. So he also had Bauhaus connections as Walter Gropius was a frequent visitor to Pond Farm as well.

Sonoma County supported a thriving artist colony. After McCarthyism raised its ugly head, many artists, writers, and especially the Jewish movie industry folks fled the urban jungles for a country life, raising chickens. When the bottom of chicken nest fell out, and chicken farming couldn't compete with agribusiness, the fallow chickensheds morphed into artist studios. It was odd to see a portion of a movie backdrop incorporated into a chickenshed. 

Polish-born deep Leftist, Bernard Zacheim (1896-1985), a student of Diego Rivera, painted the Coit Tower murals in San Francisco. He co-founded the San Francisco Artists and Writers Union, which supported artists viafederally funded arts program during the Great Depression. The Public Works of Art Project, funded Zakheim's work on Coit Tower. Zacheim moved to Sonoma County, first to Mayes Canyon, a pocket canyon near Guerneville, and later, to a Sebastopol apple orchard. 

Several artists fleeing the confines city, joined him, Wilfred Lang, among them. I would love to know more about that era, Zacheim was always a presence at art openings, but both he and his daughter Masha, who documented the WPA mural movement are both gone now. Perhaps his son, Nathan, a mural restorer, might have some oral history of that era to share. Wilfred’s eldest son Pete, wrote a comprehensive biography, which I’ve posted below in the notes. At one point, I will weave them in with my notes.

NOT DONE

Today, on this 73rd anniversary of Hiroshima

Today, on this 73rd anniversary of Hiroshima, I can't stop weeping. It's as if all the atrocities of the world have come home to roost. Fat Man, and Little Boy. I touched the cold green casings of their brethren at Los Alamos and wept. Green, the color of life, and, hell on earth. People's shadows etched into concrete for eternity. It makes me weep now, just thinking of it. My mother's cousin was a mathematician for the Manhattan Project, so Los Alamos was one of her addresses, only the government denied its existence, so postcards to her aunt, my grandmother, were delivered from New Mexico, no address. We found this out after she had died of cancer. It was a well-kept secret. Say the names. Stallion Gate. Alamagordo. Los Alamos. Say Trinitite. Come to an understanding of that unholy fused green glass blooming in the white sands. The illusion of thousands of paper cranes floating on the breeze, like at Manzanar. I keep one by my bed to ward off dreams. A memento mori for the past that we cannot change. Nor recover from. Nor should we. It's as if the grief has settled in my breast. Today I have taken baby steps, and have begun what is called in Sweden, dostadning, or death cleaning, to decrease the burden of footprint, and self, as everything is finite. Even the veiled green tears of grief.

Four Corners to Tuba City (photos)

Four Corners & Tuba City. Mffft. (Add California City to the mffft list. No there there.) Not impressed. The Navajo Nation have monitized the stateline boundaries and turned Four Corners into a tacky theme park. Define tourist trap. So irritated that there was an admission fee of $5 per person. I preferred the old geodetic marker without all the fanfare, and you could see clearly into all four states. Not that there was a lot to see.

The theme seems to be a build it and they will come mentality. Now the once unfettered view into four states is surrounded by a sea of concrete: a cement plaza, an auditorium, kiosks where native artisans sell trinkets, and portapotties. Tourists just love this stuff. Think they're getting a piece of the action. They need to be officially told with little plaques that they're having an authentic experience.

It's an artificial boundary after all. Really? Do they also charge the San Juan River admission? We parked under the Four Corners sign and argued about going in.

But the day was drawing to a close, and there was no place to stay for us Bilagáana at Four Corners, or at Teec Nos Pos (a circle of cottonwoods) which consist of a trading post a DMV, and a post office (cheap gas!), so we took a miss on Chaco Canyon. We'd just come from Kayenta (Tó Dínéeshzhee), a dry town of many churches, and didn't want to retrace our steps. Besides, there was only the ostentatious pricy Hampton Inn. We didn't know about the only other motel in Kayenta, the Wetherill Inn (no wifi). Notes for next time.



Agathla Peak (Aghaałą́—wool-gathering), or El Capitán, a sacred peak.

According to Wiki, Agathla Peak, at 7,099 ft, is a volcanic diatreme, or an eroded plug that rises more than 1,500' feet above the valley floor. Think of it as the many-chambered heart of the volcano. The breccia, cut by dyke arteries, and an unusual igneous rock, minette, are 25 million years old. Seconded only by Shiprock, these astounding monumental rocks are part of the Navajo Volcanic Field. By contrast, Monument Valley's minaret reefs are comprised of sandstone.

Church Rock, just east of Kayenta, near on the Navajo Trail (US 160), was astoundingly beautiful at sunset. I was not expecting that. I thought Agathla Peak and its sidekick, Chaistla Butte, or Little Capitán, were the the crown jewels. I didn't even know about Church Rock (we entered Kayenta late at night), so its surprise beauty was doubly astounding. No time to stop, we were chasing twilight. Neil wouldn't stop the car for photos, so I watched it whizz by in the rear-view mirror. All I have is a drive-by memory of Diatreme Alley.

Church Rock? or another outcrop on 160. It was a cathedral of a rock.

We followed the Navajo Trail through the canyon all the way to Tuba City. So much for seeing the Painted Desert in the dark.

In Tuba City Hopi and Navajo tension is palpable. Cop presence everywhere. Most of the police in front of Denny's and a monstrous casino/hotel are Hopi. We got questioned by the Navajo Police in a MacDonald's parking lot for sitting in our car. I was trying to find a motel on the iPad, So much for the free wifi at MacDonalds. Don't ever loiter in Tuba City.

Tony Hillerman's memorable character Sgt. Jim Chee, caught straddling two worlds, was a Tuba City Navajo Police officer. He left Tuba City behind—probably for a good reason.

Tuba City was named after Tuuvi, a Hopi leader who converted to Mormonism. He brought the Mormans in. Must explain the third arm of tension here. Tuvi means outcast or rejected one. The Navajo name Tó Naneesdizí means tangled waters, which is a good a metaphor as any. What was the Paiute name? There are two time zones here. Then there's Navajo time.

Speaking on the measurement of time, we also missed out on seeing the dinosaur tracks and visiting the Navajo Code Talkers museum. Tuba City, a boomtown, struck it rich on uranium, is an uneasy city.  I just wanted to get out of Dodge. I don't want to see that kind of glowing desert landscapes.

We gassed up (a full tank is a must, gas stations are few and far between. Gas is also cheaper on the reservations), We pushed onto Flagstaff during the wee hours and were met with hellacious rain! Next morning it was snowing at the pass above Flagstaff so we abandoned our Grand Canyon plans. Road closed. Revisiting Wupatki was our grand consolation prize.

I think this is Chaistla Butte, or Little Capitán.

added, extensively revised 4/17
(I got into it! You never know when a line or two will yield a post.)
from very skimpy Facebook notes

AN UNEXPECTED POEM FOR DR. JOHN

A UNEXPECTED POEM FOR DR. JOHN

A friend sends a photo from Jerome, Arizona.
John's wearing cowboy boots, a black Stetson,
sheepskin vest, jeans, silver buckle—
as if he stepped out of the last century.
The only thing missing are rowelled spurs
and the odor of horse shit and alkali dust.
The story abides. Jerome, a mining town
rescued from oblivion by tourists and art.
Time itself stands still like a dull dude horse
for those foolhardy enough to brave the journey.

Last and only time we passed through Jerome
was at break-neck speed, Neil had a gig in Prescott
on the other side of Mingus Mountain. No Charlie.

Someone in Sedona said, It's not far at all… 
Famous last words. We whipped the van 

up the blood-red Mogollón Rim through sage,
twisted pinyon and stately Ponderosa pines.
We slithered around hairpin turns like wet noodles.
The Cleopatra Hill, stained with streaks of turquoise
and rust from open pit copper mines—a blur.

A drive by sighting. Couldn't even stop to visit.

I howled from the back seat like a sick dog.


My friend smiles for the unseen camera.
By the verdigris lintel of the old Connor Hotel
the bell held its tongue on the hangman's scaffold. 
Jerome, dubbed the wickedest town in the West. 
Worse than Body. IWW miners' strikes & deportation.
But the Labor bosses won. A real Company town.

Miners clung to dreams as underground pyrite fires 

raged in the mines for decades until it played out.

Their doorways reached out like empty arms.

The copper no longer "shines like Arizona gold."
Now, a broody buttermilk sky promises snow.

Beyond the blaze of Sedona's Red Rock sandstone,
the serene snowcapped San Francisco Peaks dream,
home of the kachina cloud ancestors. Indigenous
dreams of the Yavapai, the People of the Sun,
long forgotten, but some say they still hear 
the "Gaah-kaka" spirits singing at night
from the deep mines of Mingus Mountain.

Dr. John, whose ancestors fled the Ukraine,
finds tenure from Las Vegas to the Saudi Desert
where he adheres to the old ways of the Adab.
He dons a thobe & bisht vest, salwar for jeans,
a taqiyah cap, a shmaugh roped to his head
with an agal—camel hobble—for his Stetson band.
Al Qassim, a land of sand dunes & white saxaul trees.
How he left for a kingdom of camels & date palms
is a Bedouin mystery. All you need are three things:
a tent, a camel, and four wives. He doesn't have one.
A linguist, he wrestles an oasis of tongues
into something resembling time present.
But the retro cowboy way also suits him.
He leans too far forward on his toes—
in his $2.99 Goodwill crocodile boots,
after months in desert sandals, 
he is unused to the high stirrup heel.
All propped up and ready for the getaway.


When I was a kid, I was horse crazy.
I spent hours in the basement reading
the collection of musty dimestore books.
Zane Grey's novels: Riders of the Purple Sage
stolen herds, wild horses, star-crossed lovers,
stilted language, rustlers, and masked heroines.

All that remained of the story was the intrigue,
black Arabian stallions outracing the wind,
the lovers' escape into a verdant pocket canyon.
A cleft of blue sky. How they toppled Balancing Rock,
forever closing the only way in and out of Paradise.
The moral tenor of Mormon polygamy—over my head.
The real West was an uncharted region between towns
where anything is possible. The placenames survive:
Jerome, Cottonwood and Verde Valley. Zane's cabin
perched on the far Rim near Tonto Creek.

I've owned two pairs of cowboy boots.
The first pair were for horse shows.
I was a kid, but they were too big,
lead weights pulled me down into darkness.
A fire sale. Thank God, I never grew into them.
The 2nd pair were a flight of nostalgia.
A garage sale in Santa Fe,
down by the old Delgado Bridge
where the Rosenburgs were arrested.
Those traitorous boots wore the skin off my ankles
no matter what I did. They were inlaid
with indigo and russet leather,
with fancy stitching in floral motifs.
A shackle of hobbled beauty
with no escape, no flaw in the design.
Leaving me to ride off into the sunset.

11/4/11

Stage notes for LA LLORONA, a performance I did for Oakland Readers Family Night

LA LLORONA                                                                                   

Welcome/bienvenudos. Me llamo Maureen, o Marina o Maria pequeña.  

BEGIN with HOOK: This is a tale, a very old tale...about a girl, a beautiful girl, who...

Sientate mis hijos. Come closer. Donde esta mis hijos? Closer so that I may see you. Venga aca! Sientate.

This evening we are going to visit Mictlan/ the Otherworld para Todos Santos. Cuantos personas comprenden Engleis? How many people understand Spanish? Bilingual? 

Bueno, yo hablo solemente en Russo. (To make them laugh).

I’m going to tell you a real Californio ghost story. 

This evening we are going to invoke el duende/the goblin wind with a story that’s at least 500 years old. Cantadora, cuentista, curandera, seanachie...huehuetatlolli (words of the elders), tlapuetzali (story) historia para todos santos. a real temblón, a shiver story.

Listen well to all the parts because after, we’re going to act out the play for the audience. Insert historical info about halloween/Aztecs /oral tradition whenever possible.

T’SIGE, MONUMENT VALLEY

A flock of sheep

like smoke floods the road.

Dressed in red banners, corn mothers

dance in furrows. Clapton sings the blues

to the passing blur of fields.

Trying to press onto Shiprock by sunset,

we enter into twilight, equinox.

Sabitaie, the rock with wings,

the great bird that brought the Navajo

from the north, unfolds and emerges,

a Pliocene knife to the eye of the sky.

The earth’s shadow, a blue eclipse

below the belly of a salmon horizon.

We are no closer to knowing who we are,

than to where we were.

9/22/93 
Tsé Bitʼaʼí, Four Corners
New Mexico

AIR OVER NEW MEXICO freewrite

Flying over the White Mountains

pines older than Christianity

flock the hills

in a sand lake, an island,

and islands of sand ships in the sand, 

like the sea of Azov

dendritic memory of dry riverbeds

the pale alluvium

most recent in memory

heading toward the sink hole below sea level

sand lakes remnants of oceans,

polyps and blooming coral, another kind of garden

that bloomed in the blood of our mother, the sea,

she is the first goddess to both emerge

and to give up her bounty

The Mojave with its green circles,

green coinage grows corn on the mother

on the other side of the rainshadow

sedimentary layers layed down 

like a ribbon cake from the air

it looks as if nothing grows in the pockets of canyons

the turquoise resevoirs, 

truly jewels in the desert

ghost cities layed out like Nazca lines

geometric knotwork of someone's failed dreams

but mirages are to the desert as waves are to the ocean.

We try so hard to leave our mark,

sometimes we leave it without knowing it.

Across Nevada, fault blocking,

we are flying along one long parallel valley

granite alluvium and bursting forth

cinnamon and ochre sandstone

a large city Reno?

a finger lake with fractaline shores

geometric complexity of the land

or is the is Arizona? Las Vegas? the stars?

no vertical history timeless geology

the rivers eat time    the Grand Canyon

the muddy Colorado, a hungry snake devouring the natal rock

like an old man seeking the fountian of youth

it eats ever deeper

coming back to a time when the earth was young.

It eats time the hungry beast

soon it will devour itself

becaus it eats through the earth's crust,

to the heart of the mother,

lava sensibilities hidden in the depths

give no clue to the passion

Set in stone, time itself is fluid

cracks in the earth, fissures in the soul

a lone dissident mountain the Rockies?

Why do I marvel so, the topography of the earth

varied skin of the mother

mysterious deep names for the earth

vermillion cliffs, Rainbow Plateau

from the air Glen Canyon and Hole in the Wall

recognizable from the air: Utah   Four Corners

canyon fringe, the plateau like lace

the landscape resonates

First Mesa, 2nd Mesa  Hopi lands  Navajo Lands

Kaiporowitz to the north

according to the map, Canyon de Chelly coming up

line across the earth in resonating patterns.

What do they mean? Power line visible from space?

Defiance Pleateau. How big, and utterly defiant

the land must've seemed to those crossing by wagon

no woonder they brought camels to the desert

Now the land has become less distinct. unified

It is an amalgum like the people who settled America.

We are flying over Acoma,

the oldest continuously inhabited city in the US

Coronado came here looking for gold 

and flund only the uninhabited cities 

of the Anasazi, the Old Ones.

Gold enough.

9/91 

San Francisco to Albequerque

I went to NM 2 x, once with Lucia Hammond in 1991, and later with Celia Woloch in 1993

ACOMA, THE OLD ONES

ACOMA, THE OLD ONES
 

In the Grand Canyon, the rivers eat time.

The muddy Colorado, a hungry red snake devours natal rock.

Like an old man seeking the fountain of youth,

it eats ever deeper to a time when the earth was young.

Soon it will devour itself like Oruboros,

because it eats through to the heart of the metaphor—

not vertical history, but timeless geology.

Lava sensibilities hidden in the depths

give no clue to the passion set in stone; time itself is fluid—

cracks in the earth, fissures in the soul

of alluvium and rusted sandstone.

Defiance Plateau. How big, and utterly defiant

the land must've seemed to those crossing by wagon.

Now the land becomes less distinct,

an amalgam—like the people who settled America.

Mirages are to the desert as waves are to the ocean.

Ghost cities laid out like Nazca lines,

geometric knotwork of someone's failed dreams.

We try so hard to leave our mark,

sometimes without even knowing it.

Flying over Acoma, the oldest inhabited city in the U.S.

I think of Coronado searching for the seven fabled cities of Cibola,

who found only the empty cities of the Anasazi, the Old Ones,

could not see the wealth of earthen walls glowing at sunset.

9/91 & 9/93  

Santa Fe, NM

CORN MOTHERS

CORN MOTHERS

Dendritic memory of dry riverbeds,

the pale alluvium, most recent in memory,

points accusingly toward sinkholes below sea level.

Recognizable from the air: Cedar Breaks,

Vermilion Cliffs, Rainbow Plateau, Monument Valley.

Lines across the earth in resonating patterns,

what do they mean? Power lines visible from space?

The varied skin of the mother,

the mysterious deeper names for the earth.

A finger lake with fractalline shores—

and irrigated circles, green coinage for the corn mothers.

Nothing grows in the pocket canyons

except turquoise reservoirs, truly jewels of the desert.

Remnants of oceans, polyps and coral, a garden

bloomed in the blood of our mother, the sea,

the first goddess to emerge

and give up her bounty.

9/91 & 9/93

Santa Fe, NM

TRINITY

TRINITY 

from a drawing by Marsha Connell, White Sands Guardians

When Marsha drew 
rock formations at Stallion Gate,
naming them White Sands Guardians,
she knew nothing of their history
witnesses to Ground Zero, 
and the new green desert glass, trinitite—
On July 16th,1945,
the sand fused for miles
by Trinity; a destroyer of worlds,
said J. Robert Oppenheimer.
This is the place 
where Billy the Kid 
& Pancho Villa last rode
on The Trail of the Dead.

This is the place
where ghosts of the Cold War 
swarmed in hissing sands, 
where fathers and sons listened 
to the sounds of war 
growling across a cloudless sky
announce the birth 
of the nuclear age.

This is the place 
where blood stained white sands, 
and the threefold nightmare 
of a black flower bloomed,
riding across the world 
at the speed of light.   


6/91 & 7/16/92                                                                        

HOTEL LA FONDA, TAOS

HOTEL LA FONDA, TAOS

At the Hotel La Fonda where rest pieces of the famous—
Rudolph Valentino's cape, Emilio Zapata's shoes—
we palmed worn dollar billsto the night clerk behind the counter.
His oxygen mask hose was long enough
to reach the inner sanctum of the owner, Saki Karavas,
where the banned paintings of D.H. Lawrence
are carefully locked away from the public eye.
He hissed, Take your time.

Inside the ornate gilded cage of the walk-in safe 

we confronted biting and sucking fleshy apparitions.
I said to Celia: D.H. could've used some anatomy classes.
but that's not what held us spellbound;
it was the photos: Pope Paul, Kennedy, Picasso, O'Keeffe.
And of those more obscene than Lawrence:
Roosevelt, Truman, Oppenheimer, Nixon before the camera.
And of the ones shaken of faith: April 2, 1943.

Stunned by what he now knows is possible,
Einstein writes to his host, Saki
thanking him for his translations of Greek poetry:
I am grateful and ashamed at the same time
by your extraordinary kindness…
I cannot imagine how I would feel…
it is enough to see what kind of human
ideal you have in your mind.

The walls hissed: July 16, August 6, August 9, 1945.

Shiva will dance on the corneas of Einstein and Oppenheimer.
Shiva will dance for the millions dead on both sides of the world.
Shiva will dance for the Age of Light spawned in this desert.

No one thought to censor the scientists of Los Alamos
nor the Anasazi petroglyphs at T'sanque: (Tsirege or T’sankawi?)
Kokopelli, the humpback Watersprinkler
holds a phallus longer than his bent flute.

Saki enters, his hooded eyes watch our guilty reaction.
We say we are poets. Smiling heavily, he says:

These two ladies don't pay, give back their money . 

We help Saki move musty stacks of books.
Feeding us sweets, he asks why I've never married.
I tell him: Because I have learned the names of bombs.

Saki wants to trade his D.H. Lawrence paintings
for the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece
but the British aren't interested in returning stolen property. 

Let alone, the banned paintings by D.H. Lawrence.   
Against the wall, in proper patron tradition,
the husks of his shoes are neatly lined up with nowhere to go.

The Watersprinkler plays his flute—

a slow dirge hissing to the pornographers and thieves of time.
Who will trade all that light loosened in the sky
for the darkness that inevitably follows.

9/22/90

Hotel La Fonda, Taos, New Mexico
Fall Equinox

BLUE WINDOWS freewrite

                  

Betty's window frames are the color of the sky

Lucia starts each morning with a cigarette

The sun weaves patterns through the vigas,

the bars in the adobe walls

imprisoned sunlight

the leaves of the cottonwood

elaborate on the small breeze

and cast long slanted shadows

on the wall

Mayflies dance vertical spirals

in endless progression

like an elevated vertical infinity sign

Maybe it's because they don't live so long

they make the sign

Cathedrals of light spewer from the steeple

a sign of light flooding the room, the walls

Beyond the cottonwoods

a garden of cosmos alizarin godetias and cornflowers

Someone has just laid a lawn squares of a living carpet

the mayflies dance above it

The window in the wall with its vigas

casts ladders of light across the patio floor 
and onto the lawn

a bridge into another world

This morning I awoke in a strange house

made tea, but drank coffee instead

that familiar slow ponderous crunch 
of Betty's foot on the gravel

an old woman who spends her final days 
in this house her parents built

soon she will move to a fine new apartment on the Santa Fe river

The house is getting to be too much for her, she says.

The infrequent rain has stained the wall

with heiroglyphic code.

There is no water in the Santa Fe river

This is the end of the trail that leads to Mexico City

the mute clarion announces Sunday

Yes, today the sun also rises (to borrow a line)

I held a Pueblo pipe stem in my hand at midnight

No bowl, but as I made the proper pass from right to left arm

I felt the medicine anyway

A tuft of coarse strawberry hair—a scalp?

We introduced the notion of scalping our enemies

Who was more savage? 
The names speak for themselves

Kit Carson, Billy the Kid, Pancho Villa

They all rode into town one way or another

We arrived in a white ford with the latest technology

computerized excess

When the shadows of the cottonwood leaves

fall on the ground, they make circular patterns

like cluster of people

Teenagers line the plaza last night in tight knots

the light intersects shadow on the peach

This is like arriving next door to home 333 on an aqua door

I used to live at 333 Third Ave

My life dominated by the second prime number

or third of you count zero

Is zero a prime number or is it transparent like water,

like sly only giving the appearance of un divisibility

A cat wanders along a high wall the watertower on stilts

peers over a neighbor's fence into their private refuges

We are always seeking refuge.

Lucia and Betty talk on the island of bed amid boxes

We are four women in transition

young Michael, the only balance

Soon we will need to plan our days here, so little time

Words to know: Bering  Straits

civilization, Ice age mountains

boulders migration, mammoths, obsidian

stone age mica surplus specialize cahokia

an endless progression of shops up canyon road

one gallery after another in all the same hues

art for sale in cloying pastels

the written word

should be clean and bare

clear as light

firm as stone

two word are not

as good as one

            —anon

Two blocks from this palace where I sleep

where Delgado crosses the Santa Fe River

is where the Rosenbergs were arrested says Lee Rosenthal

Tomorrow we go to Los Alamos

the cottonwoods where the Manhattan Project was born

I am chasing my own ancestors across New Mexico

Last night we had rain, today the cottonwood leaves 

have that preternatural rustle of fall in the air 

a state of being

The peaches are gone from the windowsill 

I miss their elegancy against the cerulean sashes 

I've bought Betty nectarines as replacements

though I know it won't look the same 

Today we go to the pueblos

They say rainbows signify hope

over Frijoles Canyon 
Clouds dressed in salmon hues
four corners for rainbows 
lightning striking the earth

9/1990 (not sure why I put 1991 as Hotel La Flnda, Taos is 1990)